RIC promises to make open RAN (and traditional RAN too) more efficient. But when? Are we ready to deploy RIC? And what RIC functionality is available now and what should we expect over the next few years? How dependent are open RAN deployments on RIC? In this Sparring Partners, Simona Marinova at Bell Canada and Monica Paolini at Senza Fili gave an update on RIC availability and maturity, and talked about how beneficial RIC will be in the evolution of the RAN: How are we doing on non-real-time and real-time RIC? Is RIC crucial to open RAN deployments? Will operators use RIC in traditional RAN? What do we need RIC for? Do we need RIC for network slicing? What are the use cases for xApps and rApps? Are RICs interoperable with xApps and rApps and with O-RAN equipment? What are the challenges in deploying RIC? Or in not deploying it in early-stage open RAN?